LONDON - A video installation built around the testimony of a former Japanese soldier on the killing of civilians and sexual assault in wartime China will go on display in London in October, even as its creator struggles to find a museum willing to exhibit the award-winning work in Japan.
Created by contemporary artist Meiro Koizumi, "The Angels of Testimony" has won acclaim overseas, but Japanese museums have been reluctant to exhibit the work, which confronts memories of violence committed by Japanese troops during the Sino-Japanese War.
"The work will only truly be complete when people can see it in Japan," said Koizumi, 50, who hopes it will eventually be exhibited in his home country.
Three screens emerge from the darkness of the exhibition space. At the center is the late Hajime Kondo, a former Imperial Japanese Army soldier who was 99 when the work was filmed.
Kondo entered military service in 1940 and was sent to China, where he fought in areas including Shanxi Province.
A book published in 2005 compiling his testimony recounts an episode in which another soldier showed him the brain of a Chinese person, saying it could cure illness.
"Do you remember?" Kondo is asked in the video. Apparently unable to recall the episode, he breaks down in tears.
On the other two screens, young people recite Kondo's testimony on the streets of Tokyo.
They recount how Kondo, after being told it was part of his training as a soldier, bayoneted a Chinese person to death, and how he joined other Japanese soldiers in sexually assaulting a woman they had captured.
Koizumi believed such testimony needed to be passed on and chose to give it expression through his art.
He began studying video art at a university in London in 1999 and later worked in the Netherlands before returning to Japan in 2007.
Troubled by what he saw as the romanticization in films and novels of Japanese soldiers fighting to the death and kamikaze attacks during World War II, Koizumi began confronting the realities of war through his work.
The Angels of Testimony, centered on Kondo's memories of violence he committed, received the Artes Mundi Prize, a major British contemporary art award, in 2021.
The work has since been exhibited in countries including Britain, the United Arab Emirates and the Netherlands. In Japan, however, Koizumi says museums have asked him to substitute another work or exhibition plans have fallen through altogether.
At the 2019 Aichi Triennale, an exhibition that included a statue symbolizing "comfort women," who were forced to work in the Japanese military's wartime brothels, was temporarily closed after a series of protests and threats.
Koizumi, who exhibited paintings at the festival, said the episode may have made museums more cautious.
"Museum staff probably think, 'What if something happens?'" he said.
The London exhibition will run from Oct. 1 to Nov. 20 and is organized by the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, a London-based organization promoting exchanges between Japan and Britain.
Nana Ota, 41, who is overseeing the exhibition, said she was moved by Koizumi's determination to confront a history of violence that many would rather look away from and to pass those memories on to future generations.
"Even if there are protests, we won't call off the exhibition," she said.
"I hope people will see the work and think about how deeply wartime violence can become etched in the hearts of those who experienced it, while also reflecting on the wars taking place today."
